My True North

Inspiration: As You See It #203 (My favorite colour to wear is blue!) + Little Red Wagon #503

The colors of this card are inspired by an outfit I put on this week. I had a steel blue sweater and when I put on my navy coat and mustard yellow scarf, I thought it would make for a nice masculine or nautical color combo. This gave me the chance to pull out an old favorite colour that retired years ago: Bordering Blue. I've always liked that it falls between a steel blue and a grey and I think it's been one of Stampin' Up!'s most underrated colors back when it was current.

I inked a full 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" panel of white cardstock with a mix of Fossilized Amber, Mustard See and Scattered Straw Distress Oxide inks and die-cut the Sunrise Backdrop, keeping the lighter yellow at the end of the sunrays. I then inked a panel of the same size with Stormy Sky Distress Oxide ink, which is pretty much a perfect match for Bordering Blue. I made sure to leave white space in the center, where the sun is, to create a nice gradient.

So, I initially was going to pass on the Slide On Over Waves dies because I don't do a lot of sliding cards and I already have other sliding dies - but then Kelly Marie showed how the boat bumps around when you use the shorter waves and that gave me a chuckle, so when I saw that the dies were pretty inexpensive, I went for it. I used a strip of Night of Navy cardstock longer than the card size and I die-cut the slider first. I then placed the Wavy Border die over it to match the track, and then I cut the strip to size. You have to be careful because the slider part will come really close to the edge and you will end up with an open side if you don't measure things properly.

I wanted to add the cute lighthouse and needed to ground it on something. I pulled out the Beach House Add-On dies to see if the sand dunes would be big enough, but the scale was not working, so I reverted to using the rounded edge from the Palm Tree Border dies instead. I die-cut Crumb Cake cardstock and used a Soft Suede Stampin' Write marker to add dots for a sandy look. Little clouds and seagulls were added to the sky, some under the sunrays and other over for dimension. I then started looking for sentiment options. There's a nautical-themed stamp set in the new Stampin' Up! annual catalogue that has some French sentiments in it, so I pulled "You are my true north" since it was all on one line, and I tried to give it a little wave (it's a red rubber stamp, though, so it's not as flexible as a photopolymer one). I stamped it in Night of Navy on a Simple Wavy Banner and I added two little hearts from the Smooth Sailing set on each side to fill in the space and introduce red again to tie it with the lighthouse.

 

 

 

Supplies
Stamps: Smooth Sailing (Lawn Fawn); Terre à l'horizon (Sailing Home - Stampin' Up!)
Cardstock: Night of Navy, Bordering Blue, Crumb Cake, Thick Whisper White
Patterned Paper: Unknown source
Ink: Night of Navy, Bordering Blue, Calypso Coral Classic Ink (Stampin' Up!); Tuxedo Black (Memento);
Stormy Sky, Scattered Straw, Mustard Seed, Fossilized Amber Distress Oxide (Ranger)
Dies: Smooth Sailing, Stitched Rectangle Frames, Stitched Simple Wavy Borders, Slide on Over Waves,
Palm Tree Border, Sunrise Backdrop, Simple Wavy Banners (Lawn Fawn); Soft Suede Stampin' Write Marker,
Envelope Punch Board, Foam Adhesive Strips, Lots of Tags Framelits (Stampin' Up!); Markers (Copic);
Blender Brushes (Picket Fence Studios); Spritzing Bottle (Ranger); Glitter Gloss Aqua Shimmer Brush (Tonic)

 

Comments

[JanR]

Oooh, what a delightful scene you created! The sentiment is adorable and I love that it's a slider. Thanks for joining us at Little Red Wagon again.

[Jan Clothier]

A slider card - how lovely! Such a cute boatload of critters too. Anyone would be pleased to get such an interactive gem. Thanks for joining in with us again at As You See It Challenge.